He said, We knew how much those ships cost. We couldn’t even imagine how much FTL engines cost, but we could guess. We knew how much each ship could carry. In the cryo cans, we could cram in billions, that was cryo’s saving grace. Whereas they were staffing ships with a living crew, no sleepers, big-ass ships with thousands of live staff. When we pointed that out they kept saying we were crazy, we were kooks, we were monsters. They kept saying cows watched sunsets. At that point I wished I’d used the fucking conspiracy theorists instead of the cows. Nobody would’ve cared if I’d turned people inside-out who think vaccines have nanites in them that mine cryptocurrency. But cows watch sunsets, man!
He said, M— freaked out. Said this was the rats scattering. Said this was why they’d dumped the cryo plan in the first place. She said we were looking at a private flotilla carrying the rich bastards to safety. And A— agreed with her, which was how you knew it was really, really bad. He said this was a blind. He said he wasn’t even sure the FTL thing was real. He said they were going to try to generation ship it to Tau Ceti using stuff we’d come up with, tech we’d created, and just be all bye-bye, fuck you, planet, thanks for the oil and for the chicken yakitori, we loved that stuff.
And I said again, Guys, nobody’s going to fall for that. They’re going to have to give numbers. They’re going to have to prove they’re making the other ships. Nobody’s going to fall for that. Look at all the division we caused because we proved magic was real and turned Bidibidi inside out because we didn’t trust the cops. It’s not going to fly. I said, they can’t do this now. They can’t pull this off.
At that moment in the dream he got up off the car, and he said, “Fuck,” in a normal voice, and then he said, “FUCK,” so loudly that it echoed off the crumbling concrete shell and the bones and was carried off into the mist. She watched him walk the field, three times, five times, ten.
On the eleventh, he squelched through the mud to her and collapsed in front of the car and he said, They left you, they left you. They saw you suffering on dollar-shop life-support, and they didn’t look back. They didn’t give a fuck about trying to save you. They left.
She said, “I don’t remember.”
He said, “I can’t forget.”
DAY FOUR
WHERE IS PYRRHA?—THE GANG SWEARS AN OATH—THE ANGEL MAKES A CALL— HOT SAUCE DRAWS HER GUN—FORTY-EIGHT HOURS UNTIL THE TOMB OPENS.
17
NONA WOKE UP, COLD AND ALONE, with very little idea of how she had fallen asleep; she was still wearing all her clothes, and she hadn’t had her bath. In the night someone had unbuttoned her dust coat, taken off her shoes, and loosened what she was wearing, which meant Camilla or Palamedes; only they would have thought of it.
Last night had been dreadful, too bewildering even to thank her lucky stars that Camilla hadn’t once asked about the broadcast—once she’d heard that Nona had waited at school when Pyrrha hadn’t turned up, then been driven home by a teacher, that was that. She didn’t ask anything else, except: “You heard about the broadcast?” and Nona said, faintly, “Yes,” ready to tell her about the girl from the dream; but Camilla had immediately changed tack, immediately gone to ask Palamedes what to do.
Nona, who by this point was perishing with hunger and exhaustion, had been placed on the floor by Palamedes and forced to suck on cubes of frozen fruit juice as he furiously scribbled on a sheet of paper. He only paused once to say, “You know what the Nine Houses have said, of course.”
Buoyed by blood sugar, Nona was ready to confess.
“Yes. More than. Honesty came in and told us everything they said over the radio, and then Hot Sauce wanted to see it, and…”
She paused. But Palamedes didn’t take the bait.
“Pyrrha was gone before we knew anything about it. She must have set off a full hour before any call came. Nona, did Crown say anything to you about the broadcast when she walked you to the classroom? Did she seem to know about it?”
Nona puzzled over the memory.
“No, she didn’t say a word. We only found out after lunch and I stayed because Camilla didn’t come to pick me up. Crown didn’t say anything”—this wasn’t quite true, and Nona was feeling in the mood to explain, so she tucked the ice cube in her cheek and said—“only Crown did tell the Angel that she was dating Camilla and I didn’t say, ‘No she isn’t,’ so I’m sorry.”
Palamedes was not so tired that he could not look amused, which was always funny on Camilla’s dark, serious face.